Asking your family members to prepare for a family vacation can be stressful. You have to create a list, set up reminders, prepare an itinerary, and even pack bags for the kids.
However, the hustle and bustle of your family preparing shouldn’t make you forget to clean the house or prepare it also for your upcoming travel and time away from home.
With that said, here are essential home cleaning preparations that you should do before going on a family vacation.
Clean the refrigerator
If you’re going to be away for a long time, you should consider cleaning your fridge before leaving for your vacation. Look at which food items you need to throw away because they will go bad while you’re away. If you don’t want to throw them out, you might want to use them up before leaving.
If you’re going to turn off your fridge while you’re away, you’re going to want to get rid of everything. Otherwise, you’re going to come back home to rotten food in the fridge. The putrid stench in your fridge will stick to the fridge walls, which will affect the other food you’re storing there. That’s why you should clean the refrigerator before leaving.
Take out the trash
Before you go away on a family vacation, make sure that you take out the garbage first. According to Planet Maids’ home cleaning services NYC, forgetting to take out the trash before going away for days is the most common sin committed by people who love to go on vacation.
Check every trash bin in each room of the house and remove the bins or empty them. Even if you don’t deep clean your home before leaving, you need to take out the trash.
If you leave trash inside the house, it’s going to attract all sorts of pests into your home. Since you’re not there to control things, you will run the risk of an infestation. It’s also incredibly worrying if you have food waste in the trash bins inside your house.
When food waste starts rotting, it will create an awful stench that can permeate throughout the house. Aside from attracting pests, the odor will also stick to your walls, challenging to get rid of, so you should take out the trash before leaving for your vacation.
Wash dirty dishes
The same logic behind the reason why you want to get rid of your garbage before going on a vacation is the same reasoning as to why you want to wash your dirty dishes before leaving. Leaving them in your dishwasher does not count as washing your dirty dishes. Also, if you’ve washed your dishes, don’t leave them to soak in the dishwasher either.
If you leave dirty dishes by the sink, the food debris will also attract pests and creatures to start nibbling on it. Aside from that, the germs and bacteria that they bring with them will crawl all over your dishes. Thus, you should wash your dirty dishes before you leave for your vacation.
Do the laundry
Since you’re going to be packing your clothes for the trip, you should do the laundry before leaving. By doing the laundry, you’re going to have fresh, clean clothes to bring with you. At the same time, you’re not going to leave your dirty laundry for a long time. If you leave dirty clothes alone for a long time, the dirt and stench might also set.
It will be harder to get rid of the dirt and stench once it has sunk into your clothes. In some cases, you might even need to get rid of these clothes altogether.
Aside from your clothes, you’re also going to appreciate coming back home to clean sheets or have to worry about clean clothes to change into after your family vacation.
Change your sheets
We want to do the first thing once we come back from a long journey to sink into the comfortable and familiar bed sheets. Since you already know that that’s what you want to do after your trip, you should take the time to change your sheets before leaving.
With clean and fresh sheets, it’s going to give the best welcome hug to you after an enjoyable but still tiring vacation.
Although it’s tempting to jump straight into your bed after arriving, you should make sure that you tidy up first. That way, you won’t have to change your sheets again after coming from your travels.
Give toilet quick clean
One other thing that is comfortable and familiar which you might be looking forward to after a trip is your toilet at home. Since your family is likely going to feel the same way, you might want to give your toilet a quick clean before leaving for your trip. That way, once you come back home, you won’t have to worry about cleaning your toilet.
It will help sweeten the deal, and you won’t have to worry about blockage in the pipes right when you come back home.
A family vacation is a great time to bond with your family. However, things can be quite tiring, no matter how much you enjoyed the trip. That’s why you should take the time to clean and prepare your house before leaving. That way, you can get straight to relaxing and enjoying your time back home without going straight back to doing household chores.